Embracing Imperishable Beauty in Marriage and Faith

"Well, I want to pray for you. Stumo is an issue that our church supports in so many ways, and bro, I'm just so proud of you. We're so proud of you. And so, Stumo staff, Stumo students, we love you guys. We're a thousand percent in your corner, and we're so pumped about what God is doing on our campus. And so, Lord, I thank you for Jeremy. I thank you so much for Ani, for Will, for Jana, for Caitlin, for Sydney, for George, for Brendan. Bro, that's a crew. That's a little bigger than when y 'all moved here. And, Jesus, we thank you that you are a good God who is sending laborers into the harvest. God, we believe the harvest is plentiful. And, Father, I thank you that you have sent more laborers into this harvest. God, we pray a blessing over them. We pray for these students who are going public with their faith today. God, would this be a day of great joy and celebration as they declare you as King Lord Jesus over their whole lives and proclaim that before their family and friends. So, God, we pray for even more. And we ask you in Jesus' name. Amen." [00:09:37]

"Yeah, before we jump into 1 Peter chapter 3, we just want to give a little context for not only 1 Peter 3, but also marriage at large. And so in 1 Peter 3, we could rewind all the way back to 1 Peter 2 verse 13, where it says, be subject for the Lord's sake to every human institution. And then again in 18, servants, be subject to your masters with all respect. So there's this larger part of Peter's letter where he's talking to all Christians about this practice of being subject to authority figures in your life. And so it's not just out of nowhere that he now picks up marriage. It's a part of this larger teaching to all Christians about being subject to authorities, to every human institution. Now, we talk at the well about God's good design. That's part of how we think about theology. And when we think about a theology of marriage or God's good design of marriage, it is our conviction that the Bible plainly teaches that God's good design of marriage is one man and one woman in Christian marriage. And so this text is actually addressing..." [00:27:59]

"Where does imperishable beauty come from? Where is its starting place? What's the engine from which it runs? It runs from a place of hoping in God. That if you're going to be a wife marked by imperishable beauty, you must be a person whose hope is anchored, is fully placed in God. And how many times is our hope slipperily placed in other places? We put our hope in this picture -perfect Christmas car. We put our hope in a new job that gives my husband more hours to be able to be home or a flexible workplace. Or our hope is in all these other things that make us frantic and worried and anxious." [00:36:03]

"And then what he's going to transition to is not just where does this beauty come from, so it comes from this place of hoping in God, but what does it practically look like? And he's going to give us three phrases that help us kind of color in what imperishable beauty looks like. He's going to begin with respectful and pure conduct in verse 2. Then in verse 4, he's going to say, Let your adorning be the hidden person of the heart with imperishable beauty of a gentle and quiet spirit. Let your adorning be the hidden person of the heart with a gentle and quiet spirit." [00:36:59]

"It picks up this theme, this language of respectful and pure conduct and conduct is something that Peter's talked about multiple times already in his letter. We see it in chapter one in verse 17. He says to these dispersed Christians that are suffering, he says, and if you call on him as father who judges impartially according to each one's deeds, conduct yourselves with fear throughout the time of your exile. So here we see this same language, conduct and fear, fear being the same root word that's going to be used for respectful and pure conduct. And again, in 2 12, if you look into verse 12, it says, keep your conduct among the Gentiles honorable so that when they speak against you as evildoers, they may see your good deeds and glorify God on the day of visitation. Uh, two observations we want to make here. The first is this, uh, Peter is writing to all Christians and he calls them exiles. It's one of the first things he says in his letter to the chosen exiles of the dispersion. And he picks up this theme that exiles as exiles, our conduct should look markedly different than the world." [00:39:33]

"And now you find yourself to be in exile, even in your own home. And so let me speak to that experience of being in exile in your home. Be respectful and have pure conduct in your home. Not, not a unhealthy fear of your husband, not a, I'm scared of what he's going to do to me. But again, this fear is always God word. It's always, again, here it is, hoping in God. So this engine of hoping God fleshes out in respectful and pure conduct." [00:40:59]

"And Jesus demonstrates what that looks like, that, that he's with you in the struggle. We see Jesus's practice of being misunderstood. And we see Jesus modeling all these things, even in the midst of suffering." [01:01:33]

"I've never watched a man's life be transformed because of a woman's external beauty, at least in positive ways. But I have watched men be completely changed because they experienced the faith of a woman in their life, whether it was a faith of a mom or a faith of a grandma, that they just watched persevere, even in the face of an absent dad." [01:02:56]

"Our hope and prayer is that there would be people that would see the beauty of Jesus in wives that say, I'm devoted to this imperishable beauty, and that they would be transformed, they would be one to Christ because of the character and content that is inside of their wife." [01:03:05]

"Father, would you do a renewing work in marriages in this church, God, would you strengthen weak knees? Would they find great hope through your spirit today? Please, Lord God, in Jesus' name, amen." [01:05:45]

"On the last Sunday of every month, we take communion all together as we celebrate the unity that God has accomplished through his son Jesus in unifying the church, a church of many members but of one body. And so as we, in just a moment, begin to transition into this time, I'm going to invite you to go to a table and get a small cup, and then we'll all take communion together. So I'm going to pray, and then we'll begin our time of response. Heavenly Father, God, I pray right now specifically for wives that are hurting, that feel exhausted, that feel like, I don't think I can do this." [01:06:49]

"Lastly, there's a small box in the back with three different ways you can give. And we give financially back to God as people whose hope is in God and not in money. As a declaration of our faith in his provision, but also of our worship of his greatness. Let's respond to the Lord. Amen." [01:10:59]